The furore over renaming of airports

The renaming of 15 airports in the country has left in its wake a feeling of considerable umbrage from many communities across the nation.

Airports in the country have always been named after personalities since Lagos International Airport was renamed after General Murtala Mohammed in 1976. It was a fittingly symbolic gesture to a much-beloved Head of State whose life was cut short in broad daylight by renegade soldiers on his way to the office. The whole country was in mourning and his successors sought for ways to imprint his name on the nation’s psyche. Emotions were so high then, that if the country had been renamed after him there would have been no fuss from any quarters. The largest currency, twenty naira, was issued with his picture, and the country’s premier gateway to the outside world, Lagos Airport, was renamed after him.

Since then there had been many naming of airports – Aminu Kano Airport, Kano, and Nnamdi Azikiwe Airport, Abuja, to mention a few – that were generally well-received. However, the recent mass renaming of airports leaves much to be desired. It bore the hallmark of the hurried hyperactivities of the last days of the Buhari administration. The list was said to have been prepared in the last days of the Buhari administration and left to his successor to release. Some unkind observers would surmise that because Buhari’s name was on the list would be the reason why it was left to his successor to handle. If Buhari had released it, he would have been accused of a self-serving act.

Nevertheless, as soon as the list became public, there were murmurs of discontent here and there with many becoming loud in the social media. One of the first I noted was a cry by Frank Tietie who complained bitterly about the renaming of airports in the Niger Delta. He wrote: “In an apparent bid to cause confusion and further drive divisions among the people of the Niger Delta, President Bola Ahmed Tinubu has begun on a path of infamy by choosing to annoy and insult the people of Delta State and Niger Delta in general by renaming the Osubi Airport after a former military governor of Rivers State, an Ijaw from Bayelsa State and currently the Amayanabo (King) of Brass Kingdom in Bayelsa State.

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Whereas there is an airport in Port Harcourt, Rivers State, so fitting to be named after King Diete Spiff, yet the president chose to name that one after Obafemi Awolowo, a former Premier of Nigeria’s Western Region, and decided to name the airport in Osubi, Delta State, after Diete Spiff. What a way to annoy a people!”

There are more examples of such outcries. A good one to start with is the renaming of Lafia Airport after Sheikh Usman dan Fodio. I wonder who conjured up joining the name of this revered scholar and empire leader to this undignified fray. It is provocative and patently unnecessary. Those areas in the middle belt have had a long history of volatility and contestation and now raising the name of Sheikh Usman dan Fodio in their midst obviously raises the spectre of conquest and domination. I have read comments on this issue on social media most of which would be unprintable.

I say Sheikh Usman dan Fodio was essentially a scholar whose struggle for justice from the tyrannical Hausa rulers of the time, in the early part of the 19th Century, led to the Jihad which had the support of his Fulani kinsmen. His fighters defeated the Hausa rulers and went on to conquer a huge swathe of the West African region to establish a caliphate of contiguous emirates, from Sokoto to Kano, to Bauchi, Gombe, Yola, down to Zaria to Jalingo, Ilorin and Bida. At its apogee in the 1830s, the caliphate covered the huge landmass from Northern Cameroon to parts of Burkina Faso and from the upper fringes of the Niger Republic to the River Niger-Benue confluence.

However, many areas of the present-day Plateau, Nasarawa and Benue states were not conquered but they were perennially contested until the British colonialists arrived on the scene, about a hundred years later, to steal the thunder from the caliphate overlords.

Sheikh Usman dan Fodio, his brother Abdullahin Gwandu, his son Mohammed Bello and his daughter, Nana Asma’u, left behind a tonnage of scholarly works in Arabic, Hausa and Fulfulde in prose and elegant poetry, covering areas in all elements of religion and the mundane affairs of government, that is, today, unrivalled in this part of Africa. Scholarship, per se, was their forte. When Sokoto University was renamed after Sheikh Usman dan Fodio people applauded the gesture as fit and proper.

Minna Airport renamed after Abubakar Imam, may not be contested in that locality, for he was a famous son of the soil. Nevertheless, for those of us acquainted with the accomplishment of this great writer, we would rather have seen his name adorn a great centre of learning. Definitely, not some sterile airport buildings. A pioneer among writers in the Hausa language Abubakar Imam was famous for Magana Jari Ce, Ruwan Bagaja and a host of books that have delighted readers for generations. He was also the first editor of Gaskiya Tafi Kwabo, the pioneer Hausa Language newspaper.

Is renaming Maiduguri Airport after Muhammadu Buhari appropriate? We continue the conversation next week.